The Exodus Towers: The Dire Earth Cycle: Two

by Jason M. Hough

  The doctor nodded politely throughout and asked a few questions. “I’m not sure what we can do for him,” she said, “after so much time. Keep him comfortable, monitor him, and wait. It sounds like you’ve got the same equipment we do, more or less, but I’d be happy to compare notes with the doctor on your side.”

  Tania thanked her and left her to tend to the wounded. She felt as if the doctor could be trusted, something about her manner gave all the right signals, but time would tell. For now, Tania decided she would put Dr. Brooks in charge here, and have Zane Platz transferred back to his old apartment on the station. Perhaps his own room, his own bed amid familiar smells and noises, would trigger something in his mind.

  It can’t hurt.

  She nodded to Jenny in a way that conveyed “let’s go,” and fell in with her as they moved through the station’s wide hallways toward operations.

  Logistics and problem scenarios began to fill Tania’s thoughts. The station would have to be searched, weapons confiscated until the inhabitants could be interviewed. Russell’s small private army would need to be detained until they could figure out a way to integrate them. Perhaps a heartfelt speech from Russell would do the trick.

  Despite the mountain of issues to deal with, her mind kept returning to Zane Platz. She envisioned him resting quietly in his own room, the ghost of his older brother at his side.

  Time to come home, Zane.

  Cappagh, Ireland

  Date imprecise

  THE SAFETY LINE swung Skyler and his savage companion into the meat of the earthen spire. Somehow, through luck or subconscious movement, he managed to turn so that the subhuman took the brunt of the impact.

  He grunted in unison with the creature, but with far less pain. The being cushioned the impact, went limp as its head was sandwiched between Skyler’s leg and the rock-strewn wall. Both of its hands released at once, and it fell away, tumbling down the column and rolling to a stop at its base, lifeless and contorted.

  Skyler flailed for a moment. He inhaled a lungful of air and forced himself back from a panic mindset. He released his death grip on the rope, trusting the climbing gear to hold his weight. It did.

  He righted himself against the spire’s sheer surface and found hand- and footholds with more expertise than he knew he had. Finally stable, he glanced down to assess the situation around him.

  His eyes found Ana first, just a few meters away. She stared at him with wide eyes, her face drained of color, mouth agape.

  “I’m okay,” he said to her.

  She blinked in response.

  Skyler glanced farther down, to the floor of the dome. Vanessa stood roughly where she’d been when the dome began to vibrate. She was reloading her gun and, as if sensing he was looking at her, glanced up and met his eyes. Her face showed determination and utter, complete confusion.

  The red shapes flittered around her, moving between the clumps of rock and around the craters. They were closing in, as if working together like a pack of wolves.

  One red shape, just a few meters from Vanessa, had stopped completely. Its edges were somehow stable, and Skyler thought it resembled a human body lying prone.

  The vibration of the dome itself suddenly ramped up in intensity. Through his hands and feet, Skyler felt the earthen column shift, and he saw a crack form diagonally along its length.

  “Go!” he roared at Ana. “It’s shaking apart!”

  Above, the pedestal at the top cracked into a hundred pieces and shattered. Chunks of earth fell away, passing just centimeters from Skyler’s body. He didn’t even have time to cover his head or warn Ana to do so. All he could do was watch, dumbly, and hope he was far enough in under the lip to be protected.

  With dreamlike slowness, the hourglass-shaped alien object tumbled past Skyler amid the rest of the fractured debris. He watched it fall to the tapered base of the spire and tumble away into the chaos below.

  Then he saw Vanessa, still fumbling to reload, as one of the darting red forms suddenly changed angle and came right at her.

  She didn’t have time to even raise her weapon as the shape slammed into her.

  Vanessa cried out, enveloped in the red field.

  It moved through her, and for the briefest of instants Skyler thought he saw another entity within, a humanoid loping on all fours.

  And then the red amorphous stain moved past her, leaving nothing but empty air behind.

  Platz Station

  20.JAN.2285

  ZANE PLATZ OPENED his eyes after eight months in a coma, sat bolt upright, and laughed.

  The laugh faded as he took in his surroundings. His old bed, his room on Platz Station. “It was a dream, then,” he said, and passed out again.

  Tania had been in the middle of explaining what she’d had for breakfast. She spent an hour here, every morning, recounting the mundane details of the previous day’s activity to the comatose man. At first it had been difficult to talk to him, but the comfort of the normal room, and the privacy it afforded, gradually eroded her reluctance.

  In all the time she’d been visiting him he’d never done more than breathed in and out. A flicker beneath the eyelids at best.

  To see him sit up, to hear him speak, left her slack-jawed.

  The man slumped back down into his unconscious state, as if nothing had happened.

  “Zane?” she finally asked. “Zane?!”

  Tania was half out of her chair, ready to run for the doctor, when Zane stirred. His eyes flickered, then opened. “Tania?” he called, not looking toward her, his voice impossibly hoarse.

  “I’m here,” she said. She took his hand and gripped it. He still did not move.

  “Can you turn the lights on, Tania dear?”

  A knot in her gut twisted. “Excuse me, Zane? The lights?”

  He blinked, hard. Then his head swiveled toward her. His eyes were open and unseeing. He looked vaguely past her. “I think I’m blind, dear girl. I must have fallen.”

  “You’ve …” She paused. “I’ll go fetch the doctor. Don’t move.”

  Hours later, after the doctors and nurses had come and gone many times, and Zane’s visitors stopped in to deliver well wishes, she found herself alone with him again.

  Zane could not see. The doctor had said chances were good he’d never regain his vision, news Zane took in stride. He’d said something polite, even pleasant, that Tania had heard but not heard.

  They sat in silence for some time. Earlier Tania had explained how he’d come to be back in his room on Platz Station, and she’d given him a high-level summary of everything that had happened during his long slumber.

  “Russell is still confined to quarters on Melville,” she said. “He hasn’t complained once. Everything he’s asked for has been related to the safety and comfort of his crew.”

  “He’s saying all the right things,” Zane said.

  “Exactly.” Tania sighed. “At what point does he cross from saying them to meaning them?”

  Zane stared in her direction through drooped eyelids, his eyes wandering in unsettling vagueness. “Who says he will? We gain nothing by believing him and letting him out into the colony. Can you imagine him among our people?”

  “No, not really,” Tania admitted. “Still, it seems untenable to hold him in a single cabin for the rest of his life.”

  “So … have a trial.”

  “For what crime?” Tania stood and began to pace at the end of Zane’s bed. “A coup against Neil after Neil resigned from the council? For the death of Natalie? That was my fault, I’m afraid, and Natalie was arguably on his side anyway.” The words tasted like ash. Strangely enough, when she thought about everything that had happened, it was hard to find anything Russell had actually done wrong. A lot of bravado, and certainly some questionable morals, but in the end the man had been trying to put down an uprising and find the information that drove the traitors.

  I just called myself a traitor, she realized. Why am I letting that pervert plant such seeds? She won
dered for the hundredth time what Skyler would have done had he been the one to receive Russell. Shoot him on the spot, probably. That would have been a crime worth imprisonment, she thought, and hated herself for it.

  “Offer him a job on one of the farm platforms, picking apples. Tell him if he lasts … I’m tired, Tania. Let’s talk about something else; this is making me agitated.”

  She ran through all the mundane colony details, with him saying little. She knew she had his full attention, but so many months lying almost motionless had left him atrophied and easily exhausted.

  “Keep talking,” he said after a period of awkward silence. “It helps to hear you. Hear anything, really.”

  “I’ve run out of things to say,” she said. “I could read to you, maybe?”

  Zane shook his head. “Uh, no, that would only make me feel more like an invalid. Describe the station. This room. I like to think I remember it, but since I can only see it in my mind now …”

  She nodded, realized he couldn’t see that, and said, “Sure. Of course.” Tania glanced around. “The carpet is a lush red,” she said.

  “Neil’s fingerprint.”

  “Yes, he did love his red floors.”

  Zane chuckled. “Sorry, go on.”

  “You’ve two paintings hung on either side of the door. I’m not familiar with either, but they’re both lovely. One depicts a mountain pass with a caravan crossing it. Elephants and footmen, that sort of thing. Forgive me, I’m terrible at this.”

  “No, no. Go on, please.”

  Sighing, Tania described the second painting, the doors themselves. She avoided the topic of his desk as long as possible, covered in gifts as it was. Eventually it was the only thing left. “A number of people stopped by with well-wishes for you and left tokens on your desk. Flowers, mostly artificial, of course. Someone even left chocolates well within their Preservall date.”

  “Oh, now we’re getting somewhere. Crack them open, will you?”

  Tania could imagine the doctor’s reaction if she came in to find Zane eating anything, but she found herself moving across the room. The red box of candies was heart-shaped, with some Portuguese written on it that she assumed professed undying love on Valentine’s Day. A scavenged object, of course.

  Zane’s terminal slate lay under the red box. A tiny LED on the surface of it winked on and off, an indication of waiting messages. “Looks like you have electronic well-wishes, too,” Tania said as she tucked the red parcel under one arm and picked up the slate.

  “Oh?”

  “I could read those to you,” she said. “Zane the invalid.”

  He grunted a laugh. “All right then. Bring it over here so I can thumb it.”

  She set the chocolates on his bedside table and guided his cold hand to the slate, placing his thumb on the small scanner.

  Zane waited for the chime and spoke a word, “Byzantine.”

  The slate unlocked.

  “Chocolate first,” Zane said.

  She opened the box by feel alone as she scanned the message list. At least fifty people had sent get-well messages since the day Platz Station arrived. Mixed with those were hundreds of automated messages the station had filled his inbox with despite his long absence. No one had had time to turn them off. The realization made Tania wonder if Zane’s access to the station computers still worked. If so, they could access archived footage from the security cameras and check out Russell’s story.

  They could go back further than that, she realized, and watch the assault that killed Neil. Or even further, and simply watch the man go about his daily routine.

  She handed Zane a chocolate and he popped it into his mouth like an eleven-year-old would. Tania couldn’t help but giggle at the expression of pure joy on the man’s face as he chewed.

  When her attention returned to the screen, the list of messages had scrolled back to the first one in the list, the oldest message there.

  From Neil Platz.

  Tania sucked in a sharp breath. The tablet dropped from her hands and slapped against Zane’s leg.

  “What is it, Tania? Is someone here?”

  “No,” she said, fetching the slate. “It’s … there’s a message from Neil in here.”

  “From Neil?”

  “Dated the same day he …”

  Zane grew still. “Read it to me, would you?”

  Tania swallowed. “The subject is ‘A secret I can’t take to the grave.’ Still want me to—”

  “Yes,” Zane said. “It’s not like I can do it.”

  He knew as well as she did that the terminal could be set to audio mode, and handle the task and even be controlled by vocal commands. Zane wanted her to hear whatever it said.

  Tania cleared her throat, and read.

  no time - enemy @ door

  builders came before darwin el. sandeep and i found ship 2238. he destroyed it before we could truly learn. spare tania of that—

  She froze, staring at her father’s name, the ramifications of the words falling on her like an avalanche. They knew? Neil and her father knew of the Builders and kept it secret?

  “Keep reading, dear,” Zane said quietly, placing a reaffirming hand on her arm.

  His voice broke her trance, and she read on, her hands shaking.

  spare tania of that. sandeep had noble intent, died for it. u need to know: 6 builder events total. incoming is 4, not 3 as others think.

  goodbye brother

  Tania set the slate down on the bed and wept.

  With each racking sob a new revelation hit her like a hammer.

  She felt Zane’s hand reach for her shoulder, pull her down to lie next to him. He held her as tight as his frail state allowed, and she buried her face against him to cry.

  Her mind blotted out the stream of implications that popped like brazen fireworks. She focused on the face of her father, his easy smile and bright eyes. During her childhood he’d been absent more often than not, always off on some mission for the Platz family, for Neil. Despite his frequent and long ventures, however, he never failed to make her feel loved.

  She’d been nine years old when the Darwin Elevator arrived. Until now it had never seemed odd that her family lived in the fledgling city at the time, that Neil’s vast estate encompassed Nightcliff, where the cord would make landfall. Neil and her father had been working there for years, building an empire together. Desalination plants, aerospace engineering, manufacturing. All the things they shared passion for, all based in Neil’s beloved Australia.

  Neil used to tell a story in interviews. She remembered the first time she’d heard it. Neil and Sandeep, sitting together, opposite an interviewer. The woman had asked why they chose Darwin to base the massive expansion of Platz Industries, the company Neil’s father had built into an empire. “We flipped a coin, actually,” Neil had said. “Heads, Australia. Tails, India. I won, obviously, and thought the Northern Territory would be perfect. Close to Malaysia, close to China beyond. We needed materials and brainpower.”

  “Why not just build in Kuala Lumpur, or Singapore?” the interviewer had asked.

  Neil sat forward. Her father, Sandeep, had been uncharacteristically blank during the exchange. She’d always assumed it was because he’d lost the coin flip, the chance to base their family in his homeland.

  “Money,” Neil had quipped. “You wouldn’t believe the tax breaks we were given.” Then he’d laughed with the interviewer. Sandeep had only smiled.

  He’d only smiled because he knew the real reason Darwin had been chosen.

  “All that time,” Tania said to the ceiling. “They knew about Darwin the whole time. Forty years. They must have … God, they must have found the Builder ship when they were practically kids. On their first mission together.”

  Zane said nothing. He’d hardly reacted at all, in fact.

  She whirled on him. The vagueness of his gaze still made her uncomfortable. “Did you know about this, Zane?”

  “No,” he said, numb. “I always chalked i
t up to incredible luck. Neil had always been lucky. A gene I didn’t inherit, or so I thought.”

  Somewhere deep within Tania a coldness began to grow. She tried to ignore it, then to willingly banish it, but the cold festered and grew. Neil knew all along. “He knew the whole time,” Tania said aloud. “Neil. He knew about Darwin, he knew about the disease.”

  “Hold on—”

  “He knew that billions would die and yet he did nothing.”

  “No,” Zane said. “No, I refuse to believe that. Neil was a ruthless entrepreneur, granted, but he could not have stood by and let something like that happen.”

  Tania barely heard him. “My mother went to India to fight the disease. My father went, too. Neil could have stopped them.”

  “Stop that, Tania. Stop it now.”

  “He let them die to protect … to protect …”

  Zane gripped her arm. “We don’t know what happened, Tania. We don’t know what they knew. You’re speculating.” He practically spat the last word, and began to cough.

  She thought back to her conversations with Neil in the years after the disease. He’d encouraged her to explore the theory of more Builder events to come. In fact, the more she thought about it, all the key ideas on how to approach the problem had come from him, though he’d always voiced them as offhand comments or random musings. He’d left it to her to form the theory to the point where she felt like it had been her own.

  Of course. He had to. If he’d admitted to knowing the Builders’ timetable, he admitted to prior knowledge of the space elevator in Darwin. Worse—far, far worse—the disease. Without knowing how much Neil knew it would be unfair to assume he could have done anything to save lives. In hindsight he’d clearly known to buy the land in Nightcliff, to form the vast Spaceworks division of Platz Industries. It stood to reason, then, that he’d known something about the disease. And yet Tania couldn’t think of anything Neil had done, overt or covert, to save his friends, his family. He’d allowed her mom to go to India to study the illness. And her father …

  The lack of details around the circumstances of his death hung in her mind like a black hole.